Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 August 1874 — What Does All This Mean? [ARTICLE]

What Does All This Mean?

The Fourth was very generailv celebrated by the Patrons of the Western States, and the assemblages in some instances reached many thousands in number. Grange picnics and celebrations are becoming more and more frequent, and are attended with constantly.-increasing numbers. *■. A few weeks since, while Hon. J. W. Childs was addressing an assemblage of 6,000 farmers at Coldwater, a telegram was received from Marshall, saying that C. L. Whitney, Esq., was addressing an equally large congregation of farm ers at that place. Reports from the immense Grange picnic recently held in St. Joseph County, Mich., state that a procession of 1,400 teams was formed, and the crowd was estimated by thousands. The Northern, Grange, in alluding to the immensity and frequency of such gatherings,among the farmers, very.pertinently asks: “ What does all this signify? Does it mean that the farmers are supremely happy, and come together in vast multitudes simply to congratulate and felicitate each other on their good fortune? Would that this were the case; but we fear it is not so. Deep-seated causes underlie such demonstrations. They are not for mere show or pastime; they mean much which it would be well 'for the country to early comprehend. They contain no threats or bluster, but they mean that a giant has been awakened from a long sleep and is about to take a position as a peer of the realm. In short, it all means simply that new light is dawning upon the 700,000 hard-worked, poorlySaid, but thinking farming people of iichigan. That the voice of the agricultural people, which has hitherto been uttered only in single chorus from the isolation of the farm, and hence unheeded, shall, by reason of its combined volume, reach the ear of the land. May the ear of authority heed the voice of the people.”— Pacific Rural Press.